The undiscover'd country

On Radio 4's Home Planet today, there was a discussion of the new interest in space exploration and in voyages to the moon and to Mars. All of which was interesting. But it finished with one of the guests (I'm not sure which) saying something to the effect of, "But personally, I think that, instead of spending billions of dollars going to Mars, we should sort out planet Earth first."

This is an old canard; it has accompanied the space program from the start. I dislike it for many reasons. Without wishing to quibble over language, but the very idea of "sorting out planet Earth" is a totalitarian illusion. It will never happen, and all action aimed at such grand heights is doomed, not only to failure, but to sow much misery in its wake.

Implicit in this view is also the childish notion that environmental change, or poverty, are 'problems' that are capable of a 'solution', and that spending billions of dollars of them will bring about that solution. I can see no reason to believe that such a solution either exists, or even can exist.

Also implicit (usually) is the assumption that government action is the answer. They stop spending money on space travel and switch it over to the environment or social programs. My use of the word 'totalitarian' above points to just this idea - more government in all parts of our lives making us all live better, and solving the problems of climate change and/or poverty.

But I dislike it most for what it refuses to do - to boldly go where no man has gone before. I dislike for its renunciation of adventure, of discovery, of confrontation with the greatest existential challenge we have: our relation to the unimaginable vastness of which we are such an insignificant part. Whether the world is sorted or not, the lure of that undiscover'd country from whose bourn no traveller has yet returned will only grow stronger. If we fail even to set foot there, it will be through cowardice and lack of nerve. To be melodramatic, the idea that we should not leave the nest until it is all spick and span strikes me as like wanting to snuggle up warm and close to the womb forever, a sort of death wish.

Terrorists get off

From an interview with Frank Furedi, talking about the ideas in his new book, Invitation to Terror: The Expanding Empire of the Unknown.

I think that what we have today is a very formless, diffuse anger, which lashes out at certain symbols of modernity and the West, or against what these individuals think of as the Empire. And I certainly think it is a problem when this phenomenon is redefined as something with a coherent ideology, or when it is called ‘totalitarian’ and various other names. This endows the networks with a coherence that they otherwise lack. But what is interesting is that their incoherent rage is matched by an equally incoherent response from Western governments. You’ve got this kind of symmetry of confusion in the war on terror.

Today’s terrorist networks simply lack the intellectual resources to offer any coherent alternative. And therefore they opportunistically draw on all sorts of resources. They’re just as likely to draw on some anti-consumerist manifesto or anything else that represents some kind of alternative to the onward march of a modern, technologically advanced society, as they are to draw from the Koran. So in a perverse kind of way, although they often have Islamic convictions, their worldview is fuelled by ideals that are much more to do with a backward-looking anti-capitalist, anti-consumerist, anti-modernist imagination; an outlook that says: ‘Stop the world I want to get off.’

There's a lot of good stuff here and I could have chosen several other passages, among which, the feebleness of our elites and the lack of 'greater meaning' in our society. It's worth a read.

Prison life

Richard G. Fecteau and John T. Downey were CIA agents captured by the Chinese in 1952 and not released until 1971 and 1973 respectively. They survived their years of often harsh imprisonment well enough to live very full and useful lives on their release. They have never gone to the media about their time in China and even this CIA Journal article was written with minimal input from them. There's a short version from The Times here.

Their techniques for survival

Never Give Up Hope
Scale Down Expectations
Create a Routine
Get Physical
Keep a Secret Space for Yourself
Remember that a Brain Cannot be Washed
Care for Each Other
Find Humor Where You Can
Be Patient

Pre-emptive Censorship update

I have been remiss in posting items to the Pre-emptive Censorship file. Here are three more from a cursory search.

Amsterdam (February, 2007) - "There is already a lot of self-censorship among the comedians, and theatres are cancelling bookings, Teeuwen says."

University of Cambridge (11 March, 2007) - "A Cambridge University student is at the centre of a race-hate probe after printing anti-Islamic material in a magazine. The 19-year-old, second-year student at Clare College was in hiding today after printing the 'racist' cartoon and other vile material. The article is said to be so inflammatory the undergraduate has been taken to a secret location for his own safety." [He had reprinted one of the Danish cartoons.]

Leeds University (16 March, 2007) - A lecture by Dr Matthias Kuntzel on 'Islamic anti-semitism' is cancelled after 'alleged protest emails' from Muslims .

How to survive a terrorist attack

From the Department of Homeland Security (well, the pictures are). See here for the rest.

People, animal corpses and the biohazard symbol are all at risk of being sucked into the time-tunnel vortex.

A quick family snapshot in front of the latest scene of a terrorist attack may became a treasured family keepsake that will preserve precious memories for years to come.

Satellite photos of Texas show the large embarrassing radioactive crop circle in Southeast Texas.

(via Andrew Sullivan at the Atlantic)

Same ol'

Nick Gisburne makes videos about, and against, religion. He's made several about the Bible, which evidently have quite a following. Then he uploaded one about the Koran made up entirely of quotes (nasty ones about what happens to unbelievers). It was pulled for "inappropriate content". The attack on the Bible remains.

Here's a video of Gisburne speaking about the case. (He's no Tony Blair.)

Loo rights

This is just plain embarrassing. And a good illustration of how far tantrums can get you, if you persist.

JAIL bosses are rebuilding toilets so Muslim inmates don’t have to use them while facing Mecca. Thousands of pounds of taxpayers money are being spent to ensure lags are not offended.

The Islamic religion prohibits Muslims from facing or turning their backs on the Kiblah — the direction of prayer — when they visit the lav. Muslim lags claimed they have had to sit sideways on prison WCs.

But after pressure from faith leaders the Home Office has agreed to turn the existing toilets 90 degrees at HMP Brixton in London. The Home Office refused to reveal the cost of the new facilities — part of an “on-going refurbishment”.

Veiled threat

A translation from an article in Information, “the paper for left-wing Danish intellectuals”, with an interview with Chahdorrt Djavann, a woman of Turkish-Azerbaijani descent, since 1993 living in France. She is an anthropologist and also a newly-published novelist. The title of the novel speaks volumes: How Can One Be French?

The interview is entirely about the veil, which she was forced to wear between the ages of 13 and 23. She doesn't take a soft line.

[O]ne of the primary dogmas of Islamic Sharia Law is that the value of a woman is only half that of a man. A woman is forever a de facto minor, unable to control her own body, her life, or her future. And, in this context, the veil has an extremely important psycho-sexual and social meaning. In addition, we have followed a development from the 80s in which Islam has been affected by the ideologies and politics of Saudi Arabia and Iran who both finance the Islamist movements around the world — movements that gain more and more influence. So, the emblem for these movements and their political system, the “sharia state” is the woman’s veil. In the same way that the swastika was the symbol of the Nazis.

I don't really think the comparison to the swastika helps a lot except as an emotional marker of strength of feeling. However, I wouldn't dismiss the point she is making. The veil is a powerful symbol and the political controversy surrounding it pre-dates Jack Straw by many decades. It was Ataturk who banned it in civic spaces in Turkey and Morocco is moving towards the same stance. For Ataturk it was a symbol of cultural backwardness, but in the last couple of decades it has come to signify the sort of backwardness that some would like to welcome back to the futuer. As the Moroccan Minister for Education, Aboulkacem Samir, put it, "The hijab has become for women what the beard is for men, a political symbol". A symbol of militancy; a claim made on the social order as well as a signifier of identity and belonging.

It is interesting that the veil, and not the beard, draws all this ire and defensiveness. But the great dividing line, as much for militant Muslims as for Militant Westerners, is Woman. Minor or major? Dependent or independent? Brain or womb? And though to most of us, there's really no competition as to the type of woman we would like to be (with), in any long-term contest between the womb and the other parts of a woman, it is always going to be the womb that decides.

Pre-emptive Censorship

It is apt that the inspiration for a term to describe what we're doing to ourselves should come from communist East Germany. The expression they used for second-guessing what their masters would order was pre-emptive obedience. Perhaps we should call it pre-emptive submission, and it may well come to that, but for the moment let's stick with pre-emptive censorship.

I have collected a few recent examples of Western pusillanimity.

Submission (January, 2005) - Rotterdam Film Festival cancelled the screening of Theo van Gogh and Ayaan Hirsi Ali's Submission out of fear of violence. The film’s production company, Column Pictures, withdrew the film from circulation and will not allow it to be officially shown. Since van Gogh's murder by Mohammed Bouyeri, it has been shown only twice, by DR in Denmark, November 11, 2004 and by RAI in Italy, May 12 2005.

Tamburlaine the Great at the Barbican (summer, 2005)- The removal of a scene in which the Koran is burned

The BBC, UK (September, 2005) - The BBC cancels a dramatization of John Buchan’s novel Greenmantle because it is about Muslim extremists in the First World War, and contained “unsuitable and insensitive material.”

Tate Britain, UK (September, 2005) - The gallery withdraws an installation called God Is Great, which consists of a large sheet of glass and copies of the Koran, the Bible and Judaism's Talmud that have been cut apart for fear of offending Muslim sensibilities after the July 7 bombings. The artist claims, "It shows that all religious teaching comes from the same source", which must come as a surprise to Hindus, Buddhists, Zoroastrians, etc.

Prison Service, UK (September, 2005) - The Chief Inspector of Prisons tells prison staff to stop wearing Cross of St George tiepins because they could be "misinterpreted'' as a racist symbol.

Carnival in Germany (2006) - Cologne ruled out any jokes about Islam or Muslims, though it was all right to caricature Cologne's Cardinal Meisner as an inquisitor who burns women at the stake

Spain - The Festivals of the Moors and the Christians - Censorship or cancellation of the festivals that have been held for 400 years. However, one that deals with the old Blood Libel of the Jews remains intact, despite protests.

South Park - (April, 2006) - An episode called Cartoon Wars Part 2 had a sequence showing Mohammed cut at the insistence of the cable broadcasters Comedy Central

Utrecht University - (Summer, 2006) - Professor Piet van der Horst has his retirement lecture censored by the university’s dean. In tracing a history of the the myth of Jewish cannibalism, Prof. van der Horst had intended bringing the story up to date by describing the adoption of that myth by Islamic regimes across the Middle East. He was told his lecture would create an immediate security risk.

Twenty Three Years, a biography critical of Mohammad by the late Iranian author Ali Dashti - British publisher cancelled plans to publish it in September

The Sheikh's New Clothes: The Naked Truth about Islamic Suicide Terrorism by Nancy Kobrin (Autumn, 2006) - The publisher cancelled the release of this book about the psychology of fundamentalist Islamic terrorists

Idomeneo by WA Mozart - Berlin's Deutsche Oper cancelled a production slated for this November because of the scene in which King Idomeneo places the four severed heads of Poseidon, Jesus, Buddha and Mohammed on chairs.

Whitechapel Art Gallery (October, 2006) - The gallery removed works by surrealist artist Hans Bellmer from an exhibition the day before it was due to open so as "to not shock the population of the Whitechapel neighbourhood, which is partly Muslim".

British Airways (October, 2006) - The company forbids a member of staff to wear a sixpence-sized crucifix visibly despite allowing Muslims to wear a headscarf and Sikhs to wear a turban. Presumably, the crucifix would offend Hindus. No, Buddhists. No, it must be Zoroastrians.

Scholastic Australia (November, 2006) The publisher pulls John Dale's Army of the Pure before publication because the baddies are two Islamic terrorists.

Mayor of Chicago (December, 2006) The Mayor's Office does not allow the annual Christkindlmarket in Daley Plaza to show clips from "The Nativity Story," a movie that depicts the biblical story of Mary, Joseph and the birth of Jesus because doing so would be "insensitive to the many people of different faiths."

Amsterdam (February, 2007) - "There is already a lot of self-censorship among the comedians, and theatres are cancelling bookings, Teeuwen says." ~

University of Cambridge (11 March, 2007) - "A Cambridge University student is at the centre of a race-hate probe after printing anti-Islamic material in a magazine. The 19-year-old, second-year student at Clare College was in hiding today after printing the 'racist' cartoon and other vile material. The article is said to be so inflammatory the undergraduate has been taken to a secret location for his own safety." [He had reprinted one of the Danish cartoons.]

Leeds University (16 March, 2007) - A lecture by Dr Matthias Kuntzel on 'Islamic anti-semitism' is cancelled after 'alleged protest emails' from Muslims .

Washington (April, 2007) Islam vs. Islamists: Voices from the Muslim Center, a film on the silencing of moderate Muslims by Islamists and commissioned by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, is shelved by PBS for being "alarmist".

Update
The Netherlands (August, 2007) - Bishop Tiny Muskens, Roman Catholic Bishop of Breda, proposes that people of all faiths refer to God as Allah "to foster understanding".

NHS, Scotland (August, 2007) - NHS Lothian advises health workers not to have working lunches to avoid offending Muslim colleagues during Ramadan. USA (August, 2007) - Newspapers refuse to publish 2 episodes of the "Opus" comic because they feature Islamic references and a sex joke.

USA (August, 2007) - Newspapers refuse to publish 2 episodes of the "Opus" comic because they feature Islamic references and a sex joke.

Brussels, Belgium (September, 2007) - The Mayor of Brussels prohibits a demonstration against the Islamization of Europe, to be held next September 11 as he is worried it will upset the large immigrant population of Brussels.

Canada (September, 2007) - Elections Canada changes the law to allow people under the hijab to vote without showing their face. Muslims say they had never requested it and that is absurd.

BBC, UK (September, 2007) - "BBC bosses are ready to AXE a £1million episode of hit drama Spooks in which an al-Qaeda terrorist is shot dead — in case it upsets Muslims."